Friends

I promised Pat Coakley my next post would be something a little nicer, after the spooky “Green Ghoul” posted for Halloween. These two women were clearly friends, and I hope their friendship and humanity come through.

The ubiquitous mobile device

Mobile devices (what we used to call cell phones) seem to be everywhere and sometimes may isolate us as much as bring us together. The image above from San Juan, Puerto Rico, will be part of an exhibition at the Caribbean Museum Center for the Arts titled “Daily Strife” (opening on October 16). The exhibit commemorates Virgin Islands – Puerto Rico Friendship Day, and…

Bromeliad Beauty

This bromeliad was growing in a friend’s garden. It’s not a perfect specimen, but the colors, the bit of water still held in the center, and the curve of the leaves all drew my attention as an illustration of the imperfect beauty available at our feet every day, if we only take time to look.

A Mango-Tangle of Colors

The abstract images below started as photographs of one large mango and six small ones. The first image is more or less the original mango colors. Stored sunshine. The other two emerged as I was working with the image. For me — even though there is little or no content to the images — they each evoke a different reaction and different feelings. While…

Contact!

Two large rocks along the shore just barely touched, bridged by a few small stones and had a thin channel of seawater running between them. The shadows and colors reminded me of a bruise radiating out from where the rocks made contact. For contact of a different sort, I had an opening reception for a show of my work last Saturday night at a…

Tagged!

Tagged! The thanks go to Jala Pfaff. Check out her blog, and don’t miss her website where you will see many more fabulous paintings and pastels! Since Jala was passing on a combination of two tagging awards, I’ll take my choice with the “Fabulous Blog Award.” This tagging thing is a great opportunity to get to know other artist’s work better, expand horizons, recommend…

Abstracts and Imaginary Landscapes

There is always a distinct tension for me between accessible realism, and the more abstract. By moving too far toward the abstract, there is a danger that the connection points for viewers get lost. The images in this post are part of a series of abstractions inspired by the brilliant color fields of Sandy Point and illustrate this tension. I have read that there…

Buck Island View

One of the visually stunning aspects of living on St. Croix is the nearly constant view of the ocean and the shoreline. The colors and textures of the transition from land to water inspired this image. This was sold at a benefit show for Haiti Community Support, a local non-profit dedicated to helping a small Haitian community. It has also led to the beginning…

The Irresistible Egg Fruit

There was this pile of bright yellow-orange egg fruit on a red table at St. Croix’s St. George Village Botanical Garden last summer. The jumble of shapes lit with an intense swath of sunlight across the front was irresistible. So I took it home with me. Occasionally I will go to work immediately on a photograph to produce a final image. However, just as…

On Developing a “Signature Style”

There has been an interesting debate recently on Sue Favinger Smith’s “Ancient Artist” blog about the importance of developing a signature style. Martin Stankewitz has weighed in with his own contrasting opinion in his Squidoo Lens on the subject. This has been an issue for me. I often venture off in different directions. While I could force myself to stay within a certain “box”…